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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 167 (2021) 120677
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technological Forecasting & Social Change
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore
Multifaceted applicability of drones: A review
Matthew Ayamga a, *, Selorm Akaba b, Albert Apotele Nyaaba c
a
Business Management and Organization Chair Group, and the Information Technology Chair Group, Wageningen University & Research, P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW
Wageningen, the Netherlands
b
Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, School of Agriculture, College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana,
West Africa
c
Youth Harvest Foundation, Box 656 Yikene, Bolgatanga, Ghana
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Technology is playing its part in globalization and the drone technology is such a technology with a usage ever
Digital economies increasing in a vast range of disciplines such as agriculture, health and military. Drones can provide real-time
Drones for agriculture data on farms that enable farmers to make informed decisions regarding farm inputs usage. Also, they can be
Medical emergencies
used to aerially deliver medical supplies like blood, vaccines, drugs, and laboratory test samples during health
Security and surveillance
SWOT analysis
emergencies to remote areas in developing countries. Military drones also help in security and surveillance on the
enemies’ movements which then helps select for target killings. Though beneficial, drones can cause injuries and
damages to people and properties if the user is not trained and if there is a component failure during flight.
Drones could also be hijacked by an extremist and divert the payload for their self-interest. In this paper, the
Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis of the current developments of agricultural, medical,
and military drones are presented.
1. Introduction defibrillators for patients in cardiac arrest to save lives (Balasingam,
2017) and during health emergencies. In the era of COVID-19 drones
Drone technology provides enormous benefits and opportunities in a could deliver Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs), test kits, vaccines,
vast range of disciplines. Drones support tasks such as surveying, hu medication, and laboratory samples. It can help in easy social distance
manitarian work, disaster risk management, research, and trans inspection in public places in an automatic way (Ramadass et al., 2020).
portation (Ayamga et al., 2020). In agriculture, drones can provide As a novel technology, drones provide tailor made solutions in a context
real-time imagery and sensor data from farm fields which cannot be of extreme emergencies, undulating topography, and transportation
quickly accessed on foot or by a vehicle (Malveaux et al., 2014). Global infrastructure. Adoption of drones for delivering crucial and lifesaving
Positioning System (GPS) and customizable apps for smartphones and medicines to all citizens in an economy could help achieve the aim of
tablets have provided improved flight durations, reliability, ease of use universal health coverage (McCall, 2019). A potential benefit from
and the ability to better utilize cameras and other sensors needed for drones in the transport sector is logistics and passenger transportation
applying drones in agriculture and natural resources (Hogan et al., (Kellermann et al., 2020).
2017). The use of drones is becoming so intimately interwoven within The extension of drones from the military perspective into the
the fabrics of most sectors of developed and developing economies, civilian context have also brought in regulatory hurdles that need to be
losing control of it would have potentially far-reaching if not calamitous overcome to utilise the full potential of the drone technology. Green
implications. wood (2016) pointed out that, to realize drone’s full potential, regula
Common drone applications in medicine include but not limited to tory regimes are necessary, while keeping citizens’ safety and privacy
the provision of disaster assessments when other means of access are rights secure. Misuse (e.g., terrorism), privacy and military use are some
severely constrained; delivering aid packages, medicines, vaccines, of the public concerns from the study of Clothier et al. (2015).
blood and other medical supplies to remote areas; providing safe Notwithstanding these issues, Sylvester (2018) indicates that the
transport of disease test samples and test kits in areas with high conta drone technology can give employment to the youth who could use
gion; and potential for providing rapid access to automated external drones to provide services to rural farmers. Against this background, this
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: matthew.ayamga@wur.nl (M. Ayamga), sakaba@ucc.edu.gh (S. Akaba), albert.nyaaba@harvestmail.org (A.A. Nyaaba).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120677
Received 7 February 2021; Accepted 14 February 2021
Available online 19 February 2021
0040-1625/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
M. Ayamga et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 167 (2021) 120677
review seeks to present the current developments of using drones in Channel, 2020). According to Laksham (2019), the success of drones in
agriculture, medical field, and the military. To achieve this aim, we first the fields of ecology and environment alludes the believe that they can
presented a brief theoretical background on drones and in these sectors also be used in the field of Public Health as medical couriers. The
and then the review took a SWOT analysis approach. motivation for medical drones has to do with the fact that they can
provide precision delivery with an efficient cost perspective than con
2. Theoretical background ventional delivery systems (Kitonsa and Kruglikov, 2018). In emergency
medicine, evidence showed that the use of drones proves to be safe and
A drone or an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) according to the feasible for delivering an automated external defibrillator (AED) for
definition by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, 2011) is out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) in areas identified using GIS
an aircraft operated without a human pilot on-board. Another term, (Geographic Information System) models (Claesson et al., 2016).
Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is defined as been made up of com
ponents such as a drone, the controller (ground-based), and the 2.3. Military drones
communication system between the two (the drone and the controller).
ICAO (2015) defined the terms; (i) Remotely Piloted Aircraft System The drone technology history is one that can be traced far back to
(RPAS) - which is a remotely piloted aircraft, its associated remote pilot World War I and II, and the development has changed over these periods
station(s), the required command and control links, and any other to how modern Western War is wage (Kindervater, 2016). In the mili
components as specified in the type design and (ii) Remotely Piloted tary, drones have the potential to reduce costs and risks to personnel as
Aircraft (RPA) - an unmanned aircraft piloted from a remote pilot they are/or can be used in lethal surveillance and targeted killings
station. compared to using manned aircraft (Bousquet, 2018; Hunt, 2017).
All these terms are referring to a drone which is remotely controlled Drones used in lethal surveillance are directly linked to targeted killings
by an operator on the ground or pre-programmed to fly specific routes with merging mechanisms for making decisions on life and death
(Nelson and Gorichanaz, 2019). Hogan et al. (2017) and Wallace et al. (Kindervater, 2016).
(2018) define two types of drones: (i) a fixed-wing – which generates Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in military drones which
lifts as it moves enabling it to sustain velocity through the air and (ii) the has made such drones able to differentiate between civilians and the
rotor which is highly manoeuvrable and can hover and rotate with a targets (De Swarte et al., 2019). The discourse is on the ability of the AI
flight controller. These two types of drones have their advantages and machines to be able to execute tasks with ethical considerations. Cum
disadvantages when it comes to flight range (endurance), battery ca mings (2017) states that “The debate, which has many dimensions and
pacity and payload (Ayamga et al., 2021). stakeholders, concerns whether artificially intelligent machines should be
allowed to execute such military missions, especially if there is a possibility
2.1. Agricultural drones that any human life could be at stake” (p. 2). There is a growing interest in
drone technology across critical scholarships and security studies that
In recent years, the agricultural sector has seen some innovative seeks to place the drone within a wider set of practices (Kindervater,
technologies that support farm management strategies in enhancing 2016).
efficiency through the precision application of farm inputs. One of such
innovations is the drone technology which has gained popularity (Kim 3. Methodology
et al., 2018) and has been widely used in precision agriculture (Zhang
and Kovacs, 2012). Articles and related literature were searched through Scopus,
According to Hedley (2015), several optical sensors are linked to a PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Google to carry out the
GPS so that the position of the readings is recorded and can be accurately SWOT analysis of drones in the specified domains. Also, we adopted the
mapped to inform variable rate fertiliser or growth regulation applica snowball technique (Jalali and Wohlin, 2012) in identifying other
tion; and are available to farmers to actively monitor the development of relevant literature, and cross references were done. For each aspect of
growing crops such as cereals, brassica, maize and ryegrass. Depending the analysis (the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), we
on the crop analysis to be made on a farm, cameras such as red, green, defined appropriate keywords in our search and optimized the keywords
and blue (RGB), multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal cameras, and iteratively depending on the database.
low-cost consumer-grade cameras are fitted on a drone to capture
near-infrared (NIR) pictures (Haghighattalab et al., 2016). Drones use 4. SWOT analysis
together with other Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)
are opening a new phase in the agriculture domain where we have SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and
digital agriculture, smart agriculture, e-agriculture, and precision agri Threats. This review from this section would analyse drones according
culture (El Bilali et al., 2019). From the Internet of Things (IoT) we now to their SWOT in the agriculture, medical and military domains.
have Internet of Drones (IoD) which provides generic services for
various drone applications, such as package delivery, traffic surveil 4.1. Strengths
lance, search, and rescue, and more (Gharibi et al., 2016).
4.1.1. Agricultural drones
2.2. Medical drones Agricultural drones are providing real-time data that enables farmers
to make informed decisions regarding the use of farm inputs. Micro-
Aerial delivery of medical supplies by drones to health facilities in drones have the potential to further improve and enrich the data
remote communities with bad road infrastructure and undulating collected by operating close to the crops, enabling the collection of
topography has been successfully carried out in some African countries higher Spatio-temporal resolution data (Anthony et al., 2014). Drone
like Rwanda and Ghana. Ling and Draghic (2019) point out that, drones imagery can be used to give an accurate estimate of loss. The study of
are providing faster response times, reduced transportation costs, and Michez et al. (2016) describes a drone as a potential tool for estimating
improved medical services to remote and or underserved environments. more accurately the wildlife damage to crops and subsequently, the
In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the United States (US) has approved compensation costs for that.
Zipline and other companies to deliver medical and food suppliers in According to Stehr (2015), drones have better image resolution than
some states, through which the drone delivery market is expected to aerial images of a field from satellite or manned aircraft, and they have
make substantial gains (NASDAQ OMX’s News Release Distribution the advantage of being able to monitor a field every week throughout
2M. Ayamga et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 167 (2021) 120677
the growing season than satellite which has a week or two delays before 4.2.2. Medical drones
the images are available. The use of drone technology in agriculture is Akin agricultural drones, medical drones are subject to loss of jobs
currently helping agricultural businesses meet the changing and for delivery personnel of medical supplies to health facilities and during
growing demands of the future, whereby drones helps to increase effi health emergencies by road. However, this could also mean employing
ciency in certain aspects of the farming process, from crop monitoring to new workers and training them to operate the drones to handle the
planting, livestock management, crop spraying, irrigation mapping, and deliveries (Laksham, 2019).
more (Africa Surveyors News, 2020). Drones have different features that In developing countries especially in Africa, medical drones have
make them unique to be applied in agriculture, specifically how they been successfully implemented and integrated into the medical delivery
assist farmers in maximizing their harvest by detecting problems early systems, but there are contentions about the initial cost involved in
and managing the crops by using specific cameras to detect pests and rolling out drones for delivery in the medical domain (Haidari et al.,
water shortages (Reinecke and Prinsloo, 2017). 2016; Pulver et al., 2016; Robakowska et al., 2019). The evolution of
drones in recent years has become increasingly efficient for many fields
4.1.2. Medical drones especially in the medical field, yet drones are constraint by some tech
The use of drones during Covid-19 pandemic helped to reduce the nical characteristics. In terms of payload, current drones can carry
virus infections spread as they are used to deliver automated external packages of reduced weights and size (Euchi, 2020). There is a school of
defibrillators (AEDs) and personal protective equipment (gloves, face thought that though drones demonstrate effectiveness and reliability, it
masks, etc.) to emergency scenes and health facilities in some countries does not account for patient psychology. Hence exposing patients to an
(van Veelen et al., 2020). At times, doctors require blood samples to environment where drones are flying about can compromise their safety
complete medical diagnosis. Under such circumstances, the drone is the and security (Balasingam, 2017).
option as it can deliver faster than the usual transportation by road Again, regulation is a hurdle in acquiring legal permission to fly a
which could take longer time (Sachan, 2016). In Africa, drones have medical or agricultural drone with the aviation authorities (Laksham,
come to bridge the transportation gap during health in emergencies such 2019; Sachan, 2016). Solving the regulatory challenge could be by
as anaemia caused by malaria or pregnancy-related complications (Ling developing enabling drone policy frameworks that can be adopted to
and Draghic, 2019). Example of drones helping saving lives in Africa is expedite individual countries’ developing drone regulations (Ayamga
the used of Zipline’s drone to deliver blood to health facilities in Rwanda et al., 2020).
(Ackerman and Strickland, 2018). In developing countries, drones along
with mobile technology, are enabling these countries to leapfrog ahead 4.2.3. Military drones
with healthcare delivery to remote locations even with an unreliable In like manner, the military concept of weaponizing drones for lethal
road infrastructure (Scott and Scott, 2017). operations has been extended to civilian use by individuals with bad
intentions to achieve their malicious objectives (Yaacoub and Salman,
4.1.3. Military drones 2020). It has been reported that, some of the unacceptable uses of drones
The move towards drones in the military is driven by cost, less risk of in flying drugs, mobile phones, blades, knives etc. into prisons has in
losing personnel and reduction of military budget (McLean, 2014). This crease investments by the UK police and prison service (Johnson et al.,
makes sense in that, drone pilots cannot be shot down, captured, or 2017). Though drones have their technical shortcomings, the consider
tortured (Warrior, 2015). Security of every nation is at the heart of able use of drones in both civilian and military is mimicked and reversed
governments and could mean, spending millions of US dollars in for malicious use (terrorist and criminal) (Yaacoub and Salman, 2020).
securing a nation’s security is paramount. Land-border security is
currently an important aspect where drones are used to help check 4.3. Opportunities
illegal activities and more (Shishkov et al., 2017; Yaacoub and Salman,
2020). 4.3.1. Agricultural drones
It is the military demand for drone use that has led to the spread of Agriculture is the fastest-growing field where drones are employed
the drone technology into civilian context specially in the sectors of (Watkins et al., 2020). By providing products and services (Beninger and
agriculture, medical, and transportation (Vacca and Onishi, 2017). The Robson, 2020), drone technology promises to foster innovations that
concept of delivering precision-guided weapons with drones in the will disrupt existing industries (Giones and Brem, 2017). Engaging the
military has also been adopted or extended to support humanitarian youth in agriculture is one of the promising opportunities that drone
missions such as earthquakes and other natural disasters like flood technology has provided, where youth could engage in drone service
(Mendoza et al., 2021; Yaacoub and Salman, 2020). provisions to farmers in rural areas (Sylvester, 2018). The adoption of
drones (smart technologies) by farmers promises to bring about preci
4.2. Weaknesses sion agriculture (PA) where resources are used efficiently to help
improve productivity. This PA is a modern approach for agricultural
4.2.1. Agricultural drones management that exploits cutting-edge technologies to monitor and
Flying a drone is a skill and regulators requires trained and certified optimize agricultural production processes (Trivelli et al., 2019).
individuals to operate a drone. Using agricultural drones is not an
exemption and would therefore mean loss of jobs for manual labourers 4.3.2. Medical drones
for some farmers. However, this could also mean, employing new The healthcare sector is another promising opportunity for aerial
workers and training them to operate the drones (Laksham, 2019). delivery of medical supplies by drones during health emergencies by
Another weakness of a drone is the payload and the range of flights. reducing response time and are cost-effective compared to conventional
The payload of a drone varies between 2 and 4 kg, and a drone’s com transport systems (Fakhrulddin et al., 2019; Ling and Draghic, 2019;
ponents during flights can fail to result in a crash that may harm people Laksham, 2019; Scott and Scott, 2017). Recent studies (Boutilier et al.,
or damage property (Clarke and Moses, 2014; Scott and Scott, 2017). 2017; Poljak and Šterbenc, 2020; Sanfridsson et al., 2019) have shown
Mitigating this weakness requires many improvements are made on how drones are used to deliver medical supplies like blood, vaccines,
drones to integrate improved battery technology, GPS and customizable laboratory test samples, human kidney, AEDs, anti-venom against snake
apps for smartphones and tablets which in turns would improve flight bites, etc., and food to medical facilities. Drones can offer many op
durations, reliability, ease of use and the ability to better utilize cameras portunities. Not only can they ensure minimized human interaction to
and other sensors needed for applications in agriculture and natural reduce the spread of the virus, but they can also be used to reach
resources (Hogan et al., 2017). otherwise inaccessible areas. China, been the first country to face the
3M. Ayamga et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 167 (2021) 120677
wrath of the COVID-19, has made great use of drone technology to Funding
counter the COVID-19 outbreak (Chamola et al., 2020). Again, in
September 2019, researchers from the National University of Ireland There is no funding to declare.
(NUI) were able to use a drone to deliver diabetes medication from
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Michez, A., Morelle, K., Lehaire, F., Widar, J., Authelet, M., Vermeulen, C., Lejeune, P.,
Matthew Ayamga (MSc) is a PhD candidate at the Business Management and Organiza
2016. Use of unmanned aerial system to assess wildlife (Sus scrofa) damage to crops
tion (BMO) Chair Group and the Information Technology Chair Group of Wageningen
(Zea mays). J. Unmann. Veh. Syst. 4 (4), 266–275.
University and Research in the Netherlands. He holds MSc degree in Management, Eco
NASDAQ OMX’s News Release Distribution Channel (2020). ‘Drone package delivery
nomics and Consumer studies from the Information Technology Group at Wageningen
market to hit USD 7,388.2 million by 2027; diverse entities such as amazon and
University and Research, The Netherlands. Matthew received his BSc degree in Actuarial
FedEx to explore wider delivery applications of drones, states fortune business
Science from the University for Development Students in Ghana. From 2015 to 2017, he
insights™: top companies covered in the drone package delivery market are
worked as a market and research officer for Dumong’s System; a software development
DroneScan (south africa), cheetah logistics technology (US), flytrex (israel), flirtey
company in Ghana. He can be reached through E-mail: matthew.ayamga@wur.nl or
(US), matternet, inc. (US), boeing (US), amazon inc. (US), wing aviation LLC (US),
ayamgmatthew@gmail.com, Phone: +31 622724914
workhorse group inc. (US), drone delivery canada corp. (canada), zipline (US), DHL
international GmbH (germany), united parcel service of america, inc. (US), FedEx
(US), and more players profiled’. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezpro Selorm Akaba (PhD) is a lecturer in Digital Agri-food Systems and Agricultural Economics
xy.library.wur.nl/wire-feeds/drone-package-delivery-market-hit-usd-7-388-2/doc at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He has his PhD and MPhil in Agricultural Eco
view/2465400967/se-2?accountid=27871. nomics, and BSc in Agriculture, all from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He holds an
Nelson, J., Gorichanaz, T., 2019. Trust as an ethical value in emerging technology Advanced Certificate in Peace and Development Studies from Cuttington University,
governance: the case of drone regulation. Technol. Soc. 59, 101131 https://doi.org/ Liberia, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Project Management from Maastricht School of
10.1016/j.techsoc.2019.04.007. Management in The Netherlands. He is a trained drone pilot and coordinates Unmanned
Poljak, M., Šterbenc, A., 2020. Use of drones in clinical microbiology and infectious Aerial Systems for Sustainable Agriculture Projects. He was co-principal investigator for
diseases: current status, challenges and barriers. Clin. Microbiol. Infect. 26 (4), socio-economic and efficacy study on using drones for controlling fall armyworm. He is
425–430. currently the lead consultant for capacity building project on Improving Productivity and
Pulver, A., Wei, R., Mann, C., 2016. Locating AED enabled medical drones to enhance Biosafety of Vegetable Farmer Associations at Baifikrom-Mankesim Irrigation Scheme,
cardiac arrest response times. Prehosp. Emerg. Care 20 (3), 378–389. Central Region, Ghana. His current research focuses on Food and Nutrition Security, UAS
Ramadass, L., Arunachalam, S., Sagayasree, Z., 2020. Applying deep learning algorithm and Digital Sensors for transforming Agri-Food Systems, Agriculture and Food Systems
to maintain social distance in public place through drone technology. Int. J. Perv. Sustainability, Adaptive Capacity and Climate Change, and Rural and Agricultural
Comput. Commun. Development. He can be reached on Phone: +233 505 401 918 or +233 54 993 4948;
Reinecke, M., Prinsloo, T., 2017. The influence of drone monitoring on crop health and Email: sakaba@ucc.edu.gh
harvest size. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Next Generation
Computing Applications (NextComp). IEEE, pp. 5–10.
Albert Apotele Nyaaba (M. Phil) is a public health and development practitioner. He is
... Robakowska, M., Ślęzak, D., Tyrańska-Fobke, A., Nowak, J., Robakowski, P.,
currently implementing child protection project funded by Global Affairs Canada through
Żuratyński, P., Nadolny, K., 2019. Operational and financial considerations of using
UNICEF with Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organization, NGO
drones for medical support of mass events in Poland Disaster Med. Public Health
as the project officer. He is largely engaged in intervention design, project implementation,
Prep. 13 (3), 527–532.
proposal writing and research work. He holds M.Phil. in Population and Health from
Sachan, D., 2016. The age of drones: what might it mean for health? Lancet 387 (10030),
University of Cape Coast in Ghana, Dip in Education from University of Education Win
1803–1804.
neba and, Bsc. Community Nutrition from University for Development Studies in Ghana.
... Sanfridsson, J., Sparrevik, J., Hollenberg, J., Nordberg, P., Djärv, T., Ringh, M.,
He is also a certified Project management professional. He can be reached through
Claesson, A., 2019. Drone delivery of an automated external defibrillator–a mixed
albertnyaaba13@yahoo.com and +233245992602.
method simulation study of bystander experience Scand. J. Trauma Resusc. Emerg.
Med. 27 (1), 1–9.
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